Rabbi David Kaufman's thoughts on Israel and Current Events in the Jewish world.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Carter, Kadish, and Oh the Tsuris!

It has been a bit of a strange week on the Israel issues front. First, former President Jimmy Carter decided to personally solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by meeting with Hamas and relaying his demands, oops, I mean THEIR demands, to Israel. Should Israel give in entirely, Hamas will consider "peace," which as was clarified recently means a "tactical peace" during which Hamas would work toward gaining military advantage so as to be more effective when breaking the "peace" at a later time. The real negotiations happened when Carter came to Israel and relayed Hamas' demands, namely, "Give us what we want or we'll continue to attack your women and children with qassams and bombs and we'll blow up your crossing posts, your means of continuing occupation and oppression of our people by supplying our population with necessary humanitarian aid!" Israel's response to Carter was of course, "Couldn't you have wandered around Sderot for a while? It's fun there. The 'color red' alert means the game is starting and you need to run into the open and try to catch the qassams before they hit the ground."

Pardon my sarcasm. I know that President Carter at least had some hope, however misplaced, that he could indeed have made a positive impact toward bringing peace, though one could argue that peace would be more for Hamas than for Israel. Clearly, President Carter's foray into Israel-Hamas relations could not have been a bigger waste of time, unless its purpose was to allow both Hamas and Carter to vent about their disdain for Israel.

Then, of course, on the heels of the Carter visit, Mr. Kadish was arrested and charged with espionage dating back 25 years. Not that he has been conducting espionage FOR 25 years, but that it occurred 25 years ago. Furthermore, it appears that whatever "secret" documents, not "Top Secret" documents like Jonathan Pollard, were involved, they are likely now no longer "secret." This arrest some suggest was aimed at making a Presidential pardon of Jonathan Pollard more difficult. Others suggest that it was timed to undermine President Bush's visit to Israel for its 60th anniversary celebration.

I would argue that it is more likely that the timing of the arrest is meant to pressure Israel into revealing its nuclear capabilities as part of a comprehensive Middle East peace plan that was supposed to begin taking shape with President Carter's visit and that the two events, the arrest and Carter's visit, were coordinated. Yet, there is an even more likely source of pressure, James Baker III or Brent Snowcroft, who some say may be John McCain's choices as Middle East envoys and who were prominent players in the Reagan Administration.

You may remember James Baker for his "F--- the Jews! They don't vote for us anyway." You may not have seen his even worse 1992 statement, ""Don't worry, Jews remember the Holocaust, but they forget insults as soon as they smell cash." N.Y. Post, March 6, 1992.

Another possible reason for charging Kadish at this point was the revelation of photos related to the Syrian-Korean nuclear reactor that did not exist and which the US refused to support Israel when it attacked. Perhaps, there was concern that the US would be accused of failing to work with its closest ally and holding back vital security information? Another possibility is that Kadish is the one responsible for relaying information on the Syrian nuclear reactor to Israel and that some did not want Israel to possess that information for fear that it would do exactly what it did, namely destroy the reactor while drawing attention to strong links between Syria, North Korea, and Iran relating to cooperation on producing NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Perhaps, the US State Department or another agency did not want this information, so contrary to the recently revealed NIE on Iran, to be brought to light and was not happy, even embarassed and angry, when it was?

That said, Israel should not have spied on its ally in the past and should not in the future. It just gives people like these reasons to hate Israel and Jews. Furthermore, there are clearly elements that do not care about supporting Israel as an ally, if not outright anti-Israel elements, at work in the US State Department and intelligence agencies, who will seize every opportuntiy to demonize Israel.